How a Child’s Ego Gets Overrode by Parents
It’s scary how I use reactive formation to get my child to be happy- I pretend to be happy to cover up my feelings that are “not allowed” from my childhood, like anger and sadness. I was fantasy bonded with my adoptive parents, learning to shut down my true self in order to make them happy, and pretend to myself that they loved me.
John Bradshaw writes in Healing the Shame That Binds You: “Each child needs to develop boundaries and ego strengths. Children need their ego defenses more than adults. They need them until they can develop good boundaries. To develop strong ego boundaries, children need parents with strong boundaries. No shame-based parent has these. Toxic shame greatly damages our boundaries... a child cannot thrive. Having damaged boundaries is like living in a house without locks on the door. “Along with their egocentricism, nature provides children with primary ego defenses to take the place of boundaries. Each ego defense allows the child to survive situations that are actually intolerable” (Pages 103-104). He goes on to explain defenses the child uses to protect himself, the basic one being denial. Robert Firestone explains further, “The fantasy bond is an illusion of connectedness that the child creates in relation to the primary caregiver, who is shaming her.... children must have secure attachment bonds. When they do not have such a bond, they create it. The fantasy bond... is the illusion that someone is there for them... once set up, the denying fantasy bond functions automatically and unconsciously. Years later, when reality is no longer life-threatening, the fantasy bond remains..” (Page 104).
There are then secondary ego defenses, that are used if the first ones fail. One is Reactive Formation, which “is used to ensure that a repressed, disturbing feeling that would trigger shame is kept out of conscious awareness.” It is used when repression is triggered, and is the exact opposite of what the person actually feels. Such as, pretending to be happy when one is actually upset (Pages 110-111).
I see this in my journal entries, where I had to pretend everything was normal and happy, and they were okay. I had nagging feelings that things weren’t right because I kept writing, why do I feel like no one loves me? Am I crazy? Help. I didn’t realize that I was valid for thinking that, and I was truly not heard and cared for. It’s crazy how a child can form protective instincts that take him completely out of reality, in order to survive extreme emotional pain and disruption to his nervous system. When I told my adoptive mother that nobody was truly nice, they faked it, she got upset and told me I was making it up. Deep down I had felt she was the one who faked being nice to me, and so I saw it in others as well, because the relationship with the mother is the basis for the way one sees the world. She protested because she was defending her own unreal behavior with me, wanting me to believe the facade.
I know I used all the defense mechanisms without understanding where they came from, as my friend in high school told me, “When I don’t like someone, they know it right away as I am straight with them. Whereas with you, you can hate someone but do not show it at all.” I knew she was right, and it shocked me that other people would be able to see through my facade but I did not know how to change it. Another friend told me, “I never met anyone like you... you are extremely unique.” I saw it as a complete insult, because I was so ashamed of my true self and was scared she was seeing through me. She may have been talking about all the defenses I put up to hide my repressed feelings, that I had no choice in based on my upbringing. As Nancy Verrier says in Coming Home To Self, the person who was traumatized in their narcissistic stage takes offense at observations from others, seeing them as attacks.
Often it’s hard to know if what I’m feeling is real or not, because I get flooded by “shoulds” and not being good enough. It’s ego defenses built on each other in childhood that causes me to reject my true feelings, and then I get so frustrated with myself that I shut down. I end up hurting myself even more, but sometimes I have no control because of the CPTSD.
John Bradshaw writes in Healing the Shame That Binds You: “Each child needs to develop boundaries and ego strengths. Children need their ego defenses more than adults. They need them until they can develop good boundaries. To develop strong ego boundaries, children need parents with strong boundaries. No shame-based parent has these. Toxic shame greatly damages our boundaries... a child cannot thrive. Having damaged boundaries is like living in a house without locks on the door. “Along with their egocentricism, nature provides children with primary ego defenses to take the place of boundaries. Each ego defense allows the child to survive situations that are actually intolerable” (Pages 103-104). He goes on to explain defenses the child uses to protect himself, the basic one being denial. Robert Firestone explains further, “The fantasy bond is an illusion of connectedness that the child creates in relation to the primary caregiver, who is shaming her.... children must have secure attachment bonds. When they do not have such a bond, they create it. The fantasy bond... is the illusion that someone is there for them... once set up, the denying fantasy bond functions automatically and unconsciously. Years later, when reality is no longer life-threatening, the fantasy bond remains..” (Page 104).
There are then secondary ego defenses, that are used if the first ones fail. One is Reactive Formation, which “is used to ensure that a repressed, disturbing feeling that would trigger shame is kept out of conscious awareness.” It is used when repression is triggered, and is the exact opposite of what the person actually feels. Such as, pretending to be happy when one is actually upset (Pages 110-111).
I see this in my journal entries, where I had to pretend everything was normal and happy, and they were okay. I had nagging feelings that things weren’t right because I kept writing, why do I feel like no one loves me? Am I crazy? Help. I didn’t realize that I was valid for thinking that, and I was truly not heard and cared for. It’s crazy how a child can form protective instincts that take him completely out of reality, in order to survive extreme emotional pain and disruption to his nervous system. When I told my adoptive mother that nobody was truly nice, they faked it, she got upset and told me I was making it up. Deep down I had felt she was the one who faked being nice to me, and so I saw it in others as well, because the relationship with the mother is the basis for the way one sees the world. She protested because she was defending her own unreal behavior with me, wanting me to believe the facade.
I know I used all the defense mechanisms without understanding where they came from, as my friend in high school told me, “When I don’t like someone, they know it right away as I am straight with them. Whereas with you, you can hate someone but do not show it at all.” I knew she was right, and it shocked me that other people would be able to see through my facade but I did not know how to change it. Another friend told me, “I never met anyone like you... you are extremely unique.” I saw it as a complete insult, because I was so ashamed of my true self and was scared she was seeing through me. She may have been talking about all the defenses I put up to hide my repressed feelings, that I had no choice in based on my upbringing. As Nancy Verrier says in Coming Home To Self, the person who was traumatized in their narcissistic stage takes offense at observations from others, seeing them as attacks.
Often it’s hard to know if what I’m feeling is real or not, because I get flooded by “shoulds” and not being good enough. It’s ego defenses built on each other in childhood that causes me to reject my true feelings, and then I get so frustrated with myself that I shut down. I end up hurting myself even more, but sometimes I have no control because of the CPTSD.
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